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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048743">truthfully</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>LOONA (Korea Band)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Break Up, Established 2Jin, F/F, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Not Beta Read, a short and narration heavy drabble, mentioned jinsoul and yeojin, the ending is sad-ish, very minor viseul and chuuves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:47:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,962</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26048743</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>if only feelings were that simple,</i> hyunjin thinks. <i>if only she could just will them away.</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ha Sooyoung | Yves/Kim Jiwoo | Chuu, Jeon Heejin/Kim Hyunjin, Jeon Heejin/Kim Jungeun | Kim Lip, Jo Haseul/Viian Wong | ViVi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>58</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>truthfully</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>a brief disclaimer that this particular fic of mine has only been <i>very</i> lightly edited, so it might not be too good in all honesty. i hope that's okay. enjoy this 2jin-centric story.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“hyunjin,” heejin croaks into the phone. “i’m so sorry.”</p><p>hyunjin stays silent. heejin is crying openly now, choking on her own sobs.</p><p>“please...please come back,” the slightly older girl begs. “let me fix this.”</p><p>hyunjin almost listens to her. the guest bedroom she’s staying in now is so bare-- haseul hadn’t ever gotten around to decorating it-- and the stark, white color of it all is making hyunjin dizzy. the only sign of a bit of wear and tear lies in the carpet, which had been scratched up when yeojin brought over a dog that she had been babysitting for the week (this was a story haseul never failed to tell anyone who stepped foot into her apartment). the room feels hauntingly hollow, too pristine to the point where it’s barely even homey, and it would be so much easier to merely return to heejin, the more hyunjin pictures it.</p><p>but hyunjin can still recall the image from yesterday evening, the one that she had imprinted in her mind from the back alleyway of a club that they had all gone out to for sooyoung’s birthday celebration. sooyoung and jiwoo were wrapped up in one another on a cushioned, red couch in said club, the birthday girl sprawled out with her head laying directly on top of jiwoo’s thigh. the shorter redhead was fondly smiling down at her slightly tipsy girlfriend, running her fingers through sooyoung’s chocolate-colored, wavy locks of hair. the sight of two of her close friends being wrapped up in one another made hyunjin miss heejin, who she had seemingly lost about halfway through the party. while hyunjin was busy catching up with a bunch of her classmates, some who had even attended high school with her and jinsol years ago, heejin had seemingly disappeared, a fact which slightly frustrated hyunjin. reuniting with old peers was a task she honestly had no real interest in, but only did so out of polite courtesy; the half-finished cosmopolitan in hyunjin’s hand (her second glass that night) was certainly helping the time pass by a bit easier as well.</p><p>it wasn’t unnerving at first though; hyunjin had expected that she and heejin would find their individual ways to one another at some point later in the night, as it usually happened like clockwork when the night was winding down-- it was just one of those surefire things (or at least, hyunjin assumed it was so). however, when it had been almost an hour and a half since hyunjin had last seen her girlfriend, heejin was still nowhere to be found-- not even by a single soul. when hyunjin inquires about heejin’s whereabouts with jiwoo, the slightly older girl merely shakes her head.</p><p>“i haven’t seen her, i’m sorry,” jiwoo says with a lapful of a giggling sooyoung. jiwoo is rubbing her girlfriend’s shoulder, trying to get her to quiet down at least a little bit. “if she’s not in here, you can check outside. there’s a patio out there; maybe she just wanted some air or something.”</p><p>“thanks, jiwoo,” hyunjin smiles. “i’ll be back.”</p><p> <i>lie number one.</i></p><p>hyunjin silently pushes out the club’s back door; it’s a light, plasticky one that opens without much pressure. there’s a little spot for a deck outside, one that houses a few wooden chairs that all surround a single circular table-- but heejin isn’t there. it’s then that hyunjin begins to worry, taking her bottom lip in between her teeth as she nibbles on it, unconsciously pulling at the dead skin lying there. hyunjin’s thoughts get murky, and with this, her brain momentarily detaches itself from reality. the brown-haired girl unconsciously lets go of her grip on the door, and it begins to swing backwards, causing hyunjin to stumble.</p><p>the door shuts behind her.</p><p>hyunjin gasps, quickly whipping around to jiggle with the door handle. it doesn’t budge; the back door to the club remains firmly locked, absolutely impossible to move out of place.</p><p>a sigh escapes the brunettes’s mouth. she had managed to get herself trapped outside of the club, and now she had to walk around the building to get back to her friends and-- hopefully-- heejin as well. the alleyway leading in the requisite direction is dark, only lit in certain spots from a variety of streetlights that had been placed around the club’s corners, but hyunjin doesn’t mind; she knows she can carry herself well.</p><p>but when hyunjin turns left, rounding the edge of the club building, the brunette immediately stops in her tracks. she can recognize heejin’s side profile anywhere-- hyunjin has no doubts that the girl she spots, the one standing up against the wall of said club, is her girlfriend. </p><p>it takes another second for it to click in hyunjin’s mind; the figure standing directly in front of heejin is undeniably jung-eun. </p><p>hyunjin freezes in place for a moment, but heejin and jung-eun don’t. their faces are already centimeters apart.</p><p>one of them surges forward-- hyunjin thinks it’s jung-eun, but she doesn’t know if that’s merely a product of her wishful thinking or not. what she does know is that no one breaks the kiss; it just deepens, both of them moving their lips against the other’s in such a harmonic rhythm that it makes hyunjin wonder if this was really the first time that this has happened.</p><p>hyunjin stands there for a few seconds; she figures that the human brain likes to torture itself, because she couldn’t seem to look away, to risk losing sight of the scene unfolding before her. if she did, it would fade away and she would be able to pretend that heejin, who she naively thought to be the one for her, wasn’t kissing another girl in the back lot of this bar, a mere six feet away from the open sidewalk. that should have been what hyunjin wanted though, a chance to forget, but she felt an almost inexplicable pull to continue looking despite how horrific of an event she was confronted with. hyunjin was spellbound, cursed by the spirits to endure this sight. it was a harsh change from the fairytale she felt like she was living in a mere five minutes ago, the one that was once her reality, as it now became quite clear that hyunjin’s life was anything but that; this facade of an almost magical sense of perfection had quickly crumbled to the ground.</p><p>hyunjin’s limbs are moving before she can even process what’s happening. she pulls her own feet off of the ground despite the difficulty of such a task; they feel like they’re made of thick slabs of stone.</p><p>however, unlike those clips in the numerous dramas that hyunjin had watched, the ones where the main character has their heroic moment and stands up for themselves, hyunjin merely walks away. she doesn’t wish-- in fact, she can’t bear-- to cause a scene.</p><p>hyunjin starts moving at a slow pace at first, not wanting to risk alerting the two girls at the end of the block of her presence. when hyunjin turns the corner though, her feet pick immediately up in speed, and the brunette ends up alternating between jogging and full-out sprinting the mile back to the apartment she shares with heejin. she doesn’t return to the club, and doesn’t spare a glance at heejin’s sleek, black car that they had ridden to said building in together. hyunjin feels like she has blinders on when she manages to dislodge her feet that were once rooted to the ground. once she was off and running, nothing would stand in her way of doing just that.</p><p>
  <i>cowardice, some would call it. running may be frowned upon, but hyunjin calls it a basic life response. if she wanted to truly live, she had to leave then-- leave heejin, that is.</i>
</p><p>she unlocks their front door with shaky hands, fingers trembling as she tries to fit the clunky brass key into the lock. hyunjin barely glances around, just barges inside her room and throws a chunk of her wardrobe and some other necessities into a large, black duffel bag. she grabs her backpack too, which is leaning by the front door, and all but runs out of there, never to look back.</p><p>hyunjin should have seen it coming, she figures, after she hightails it out of their apartment.</p><p>kim jung-eun was an enigma, and hyunjin simply wasn’t. while hyunjin had been the warm, steady presence in heejin’s life for over a year--almost two-- now, jung-eun provided a spark that heejin had immediately been drawn to. the two dance classmates had grown impossibly close in such a short amount of time that hyunjin, being heejin’s girlfriend, went from not knowing who jung-eun was to learning the older girl’s favorite food, clothing size, and the lengthy history of her hair dyeing escapades within less than a few weeks. jung-eun’s shoes were almost always present in the entrance hall to her and heejin’s apartment, and the oldest girl became a bi-weekly presence at their nightly dinners. hyunjin had really liked jung-eun; the older girl was always sure to dote on her, and hyunjin definitely considered her to be a good friend. however, it was clear that jung-eun was heejin’s friend more than anything, as the two quickly became practically inseparable, especially considering the fact that they had similar class schedules and shared daily, after-school practices for competition season. it still wasn’t a point of concern for hyunjin though; she trusted heejin. </p><p>because through the countless “i love you’s” and other small words of reassurance that the older, black-haired girl had gifted hyunjin during their time together, hyunjin had began to believe that she was worthy of love after all. heejin taught her that; she helped hyunjin learn that maybe she could be loved too.</p><p><i>maybe that in itself was another lie,</i> hyunjin wonders. <i>just more inherently flawed reasoning.</i></p><p>after a couple of hours of walking around aimlessly and a quick but terribly late dinner of takeout that she grabbed at a chinese food spot she just so happened to stumble across, hyunjin shows up at haseul’s house at one in the morning. the older girl invites her inside graciously, giving hyunjin a room for the night without question. hyunjin doesn’t tell haseul what had happened until the next morning at breakfast, when she breaks down in the middle of the older girl’s kitchen. haseul promises that she can stay with her for as long as she needs.</p><p>hyunjin’s phone rings at ten forty three that same morning. haseul and vivi-- who had made her way over to her girlfriend’s home, as usual for the two of them-- ask hyunjin if she really wants to answer it.</p><p>“are you really ready?” vivi inquires, cat-like eyes narrowing as she stares over at hyunjin, who simply keeps her head down, eyes still locked on the blaring screen of her own phone. the youngest girl in the room kind of looks like she’s seen a ghost, but she soon mellows out.</p><p>“i don’t think i have a choice,” is the response hyunjin eventually gives, pushing herself up from the dining room table. “i’ll be back, okay?” </p><p>hyunjin slowly moves back to the guest room, making sure to shut the door behind her so that it’s snug against the frame. she breathes out, leaning the back of her head against the room’s painted walls.</p><p>her phone goes silent eventually, but as soon as it does, it’s ringing again. hyunjin doesn’t even have to look to know who it still is.</p><p>she swipes her finger across the screen.</p><p>“hyunjin,” heejin breathes out within a second. “hyun....”</p><p>hyunjin says nothing.</p><p>the older girl sniffles. </p><p>hyunjin can piece together the timeline in her mind; heejin had discovered that hyunjin was not in their apartment (upon arrival back from jung-eun’s place, which is where hyunjin figures that heejin had spent the night, considering how late she waited to call hyunjin) and the fact that half of the younger girl’s stuff had disappeared from their shared drawers. once heejin figured that out, it wasn’t too difficult to connect the dots of what exactly happened.</p><p>“i’m sorry,” heejin sobs. “i planned what i wanted to say to you, but--” the older girl pauses, and hyunjin hears crumpling sounds on the other end. it’s paper, she notes.</p><p>
  <i>isn’t it funny, hyunjin thinks, how most people hear that line when someone is trying to confess to them? the masses get to hear such a cliche when they’re falling in love, but heejin had dropped hyunjin down from the clouds. hyunjin thought that being with heejin was like living in heaven, but now she was falling in a different sense-- plummeting back to the cold, hard ground of her reality, which evidently provided her with more misery than anything else. hyunjin felt blindsided.</i>
</p><p>“i...i’m just so sorry, hyunjin. please know that.”</p><p>another lie, hyunjin thinks, and maybe it’s unfair of her (still, she also believes that it’s pretty unfair that she had to find out that her girlfriend was busy kissing someone else outside of her knowledge).</p><p>“i fucked up. please, hyunjin-- please give me a second chance,” heejin continues. “it’ll never happen again; it shouldn’t have happened in the first place. i’m sorry.”    </p><p>hyunjin opens her mouth, but is cut off by a ringing sound in the background. heejin freezes up too-- the only thing hyunjin can hear from the other end is the ragged breathing of the other girl.</p><p>the phone keeps ringing, and heejin mutters another sorry. hyunjin wonders when that word will lose its meaning-- that is, if it hasn’t already.</p><p>“heej,” the voicemail to their landline starts playing (neither heejin nor hyunjin had bought the phone, as their landlord had just gifted it to them along with the apartment). “heejin, pick up. we need to finish our talk,” the recording rings out, and heejin gasps.</p><p>hyunjin hears shuffling in the background. the sound of the voicemail gets louder, evidence that heejin is moving towards it.</p><p>“don’t go to hyunjin, heej. call me back. you can’t just leave like this,” jung-eun’s voice becomes clearer by the second. “i know you’re hearing this, heejin.”</p><p>“fuck,” heejin whispers, clammoring with the buttons. after a moment, the voicemail’s sound fades from the background, as heejin had managed to turn it off. “hyunjin--”</p><p>“you…” hyunjin starts, tone meek. it’s the first word she utters to the older girl. “you were talking to her right before you called me?”</p><p>“hyunjin--”</p><p>“tell me the truth, heejin,” hyunjin shakes her head. “please. i can’t do this-- i just need to know what happened between you and her.”</p><p>“okay,” heejin starts, and hyunjin knows that the older girl is nodding. it was a byproduct of being near another person for an extended period of time; if you cared enough about them, you eventually began to pick up on almost all of their tendencies. and god, did hyunjin care about heejin.</p><p>“okay,” heejin repeats quietly. “last night--”</p><p><i>another lie.</i> hyunjin gives a pitiful laugh, so low in volume that it’s comparable to a whispered sound.</p><p>“did this whole thing really start last night?” hyunjin asks. they both can hear the unsaid question. <i>have you cheated on me before?</i></p><p>heejin doesn’t say anything for a moment; the older girl is speechless.</p><p>“i’m not blind, heej,” hyunjin says, a wry smile on her face as she keeps her grip steady, trying to stop her phone from shaking next to her ear. “just tell me the truth about everything.”</p><p>“really,” hyunjin repeats. “it’s all i ask, heejin. please.”</p><p>“okay,” heejin breathes out again. “of course, whatever you want.”</p><p>a fickle statement, hyunjin figures. because what she wants more than anything is for them to be okay, for heejin to love her, but last night had put a damper on just that (and the fact that heejin had willingly taken part in breaking hyunjin’s heart stung worse than anything the younger girl had ever experienced).</p><p>but right then, heejin gives hyunjin what she wants; she tells hyunjin the whole truth about what had been going on between her and jung-eun (well, hyunjin couldn’t be entirely sure about just that, but there was still a part of her that felt inclined to believe heejin). </p><p>hyunjin gets what she wants this time, and because she does-- because she now knows about the two of them-- she has to do something that she doesn’t want to.</p><p>“i’m sorry,” hyunjin mutters when heejin finishes speaking. “i can’t.”</p><p>“hyunjin--” heejin starts, voice cracking. “please.”</p><p>hyunjin had never heard heejin beg before that morning-- not in a serious manner, at least. she can only register how pitiful of a sound it is.</p><p>“i need time, heej,” hyunjin admits.</p><p>“i’ll wait for you,” heejin immediately promises. “take all the time and space you need. i love you.”</p><p>
  <i>was it just yet another lie?</i>
</p><p>it’s funny, hyunjin thinks, how those words are exactly the last thing that she wants to hear right then.</p><p>“take care, heej,” is what hyunjin settles for. “i’ll talk to you soon.”</p><p>hyunjin slumps against the door when the call ends after another minute of cautious, awkward silence. she immediately slides down the frame so that she’s now sitting on the floor, with her thighs pressing into the soft carpet lying beneath her. hyunjin’s running a hand through her hair-- pulling at it, almost-- in distress. </p><p>“fuck,” is all she says when a few more tears begin to run down her face. “fuck.”</p><p>because when heejin talks in that musical voice of hers, hyunjin remembers-- she remembers the way the part in heejin’s hair naturally fell, how stray locks perfectly framed the sides of her face; heejin was gorgeous like that, so much so that she had even been called a princess or goddess of sorts by random passersby (many of whom were young children) that the two of them had encountered out in public. hyunjin remembers the way heejin’s vanilla chapstick tasted against her own lips when they leaned over the center console to kiss each other in heejin’s car, which they often did until they were both breathless, cheeks tinged pink and foreheads knocking together. hyunjin remembers the way heejin’s dainty fingers curled around her shirt collar, the one she had to wear for her old gig as a barista, and how the older girl would have to spend a solid minute smoothing out the wrinkles on hyunjin’s shirt afterwards, laughing to herself as she does so. </p><p>but hyunjin also remembers the aching, pulsing sensation that overtook her body when she spotted heejin and jung-eun together, how thick, fluid metal seemed to fill the crevices of her being, weighing her down until she was stuck-- both physically and emotionally. and by looking at the pasty white walls of haseul’s guest bedroom, hyunjin is taken back to last night, to the sight of the crumbling, white brick wall that lied at the back of the bar, a wall which heejin had her back pressed against while she kissed jung-eun back. as present as hyunjin is-- she could touch the white wall of the tiny guest room if she just reached out a little further, she feels like the sight of the club’s exterior, the sight of heejin and jung-eun with their lips locked together, is equally as tangible. hyunjin remembers vividly, but she begins to wish that she wouldn’t.</p><p>and it’s also because she remembers that hyunjin doesn’t know if she listens to heejin as much as she just hears her anymore, because how could she truly listen to the phrase ‘i love you’ come from the older girl’s mouth when she had seen her girlfriend kissing jung-eun with her very own eyes?  </p><p>hyunjin emerges from the room five minutes later with red-rimmed eyes and a tight smile pulled across her face. haseul takes one look at her and quickly shuffles away to bring her a mug of tea.</p><p>hyunjin sits in a chair in haseul’s living room until her legs grow numb and her cup is empty. her throat tightens up as she tries to take small sips of the tea, but she powers through it; she doesn’t want to deal with even more concerned stares that she’d surely earn from the older girl if she left her drink untouched.</p><p>hyunjin drinks down the tea like nothing is wrong-- she ignores the way she feels like she’s suffocating. she ignores the sharp ache in her chest until the drink is completely gone. </p><p><i>if only feelings were that simple,</i> hyunjin thinks. <i>if only she could just will them away.</i></p><p>hyunjin acts like everything is okay, even when it’s just another one of the many lies that shape her world.  </p><p>
  <i>(heejin and hyunjin never get back together, in the end. vivi and jinsol help bring the rest of hyunjin’s stuff to haseul’s apartment, where hyunjin stays until the lease she shares with heejin for the year runs out; they thankfully only had three weeks left on it. it’s an unspoken agreement that they won’t sign another one together.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>there are attempts, of course there are, because how could the two of them think to just leave one another behind?</i>
</p><p>
  <i>still, they all fall short.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>heejin and jung-eun end up dating for a month or so at some point later in the year. hyunjin pretends that it doesn’t hurt.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>there’s a new severance in their friend group. hyunjin pretends that she doesn’t miss jiwoo and sooyoung, who have stopped calling and inviting her out as frequently as they used to. and despite her better judgement, hyunjin even misses jung-eun's company too.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>hyunjin doesn’t have to talk nor think about how she misses heejin-- it was just a given that was better left unacknowledged.</i>
</p><p><i>heejin and hyunjin had built a relationship on commonalities in their separate worlds: they went to the same university, had similar friend groups, and were both members of this single local gym. despite their breakup, they don’t stop running into one another, especially once junior year starts and they end up living in the same neighborhood; it was the cheapest one in their college town. hyunjin still sees heejin once every two weeks or so, whether it’s at the ramen place down the block from her new part-time job or in a line for the grocery store or at the car dealership lobby. heejin doesn’t disappear from hyunjin’s worldview, and hyunjin pretends that she doesn’t wish that heejin would do just that.</i> </p><p>
  <i>however, to make things even more complex, the two of them had also built a world of their own. there was this world, the one that they had created together between the four walls of their old apartment, or in their favorite corner of the campus library. there were endless places around town that, to hyunjin’s mind, had been shaped by the memories she and heejin had created there. hyunjin didn’t refer to these locations as anything other than “their spot” for over a year, and it was hard to dissociate them from heejin when all she could see, staring at that library table, was the way heejin would fold her hand over hyunjin’s whenever they were sitting down and working together, the older girl lacing her fingers with hyunjin’s own.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>hyunjin pretends that she doesn’t want to let go of their world, where she and heejin were one and everything was theirs to experience, to live, and to take.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>hyunjin pretends, and pretends, and pretends, until she assumes the role of the character she tries so hard to play.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>it takes time. the seasons change three times before hyunjin can assuredly say that she is over heejin.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>even then, she wonders just how much of the full truth is she telling.)</i>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>this little fic was born because <i>a.</i> i was in a mood last night and <i>b.</i> i can't write dialogue to save my life, so i chose to create a very narration heavy drabble instead. it was pretty self-indulgent to write, so i do hope this was at least somewhat enjoyable for you all. i'm still sorry that i didn't give 2jin (or even heelip, for that matter) a happy ending this time around though :(</p><p>thanks for reading. &lt;3 take care everyone, ok? wishing you all the very best.<br/>twitter: @DECALCOMONlA</p></blockquote></div></div>
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